Directed by Fringe First Award winner, Andrew Dawson, The Idiot Colony is a stylish, symbolic and sorrowful account of three womens lives inside a mental asylum. However, while the production is faultless, the script appears somewhat convoluted and the pieces intended expose effect is marred by an overall lack of clarity.
Joy, Mary and Victoria have been patients for decades. They were all incarcerated for some form of sexual deviancy, their crimes ranging from being abused to becoming an unmarried mother, flirting with men to having an orgasm in a cinema. Now locked in this monochrome institution, they cope in different ways and find strength in their feminine intimacy.
Claire Coache, Rebecca Loukes and Cassandra Friend bring charm, sensitivity and enormous expressiveness to their roles as the three patients. Their gorgeously choreographed synchronized movements and slickly symbolic actions are interrupted throughout by a loud bell that calls them back to heart-rending scenes of realism. The aesthetic purity of seeing Mary mime a piano lesson and Victoria receive a bath from the nurses make this easily the most beautiful production at this years Fringe.
What lets the play down, though, is its confusing time-shifts and priority of spectacle over sense. The flyer explains that it is set in 1981, but with Princess Dianas wedding and the Second World War mentioned in the same breath, it is difficult to gather this information from the play alone. The accompanying literature calls it an expose of the forced incarceration of young women in Britain and Ireland, but while the production is highly disturbing in places, the situation is never put into context and thus remains distant, if not totally unreal.
This is an exquisite piece of theatre that will take your breath away, but its serious message is lost to its ocular perfection.
